1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a non-volatile memory cell and methods for programming, erasing and reading thereof, and in particular, to a single gate electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) cell and methods for programming, erasing and reading thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
The conventional single gate non-volatile memory cell is usually composed by a select transistor and a store transistor, which are coupled in series. Because data of the non-volatile memory cell is stored in a single store transistor, the operation efficiency (including programming speed and erasing speed) of the cell can not be improved. Additionally, the conventional single gate non-volatile memory cell has a small read current, resulting in a narrow margin of read currents occurring between a program state and an erase state of the cell. If the conventional single gate non-volatile memory cell is subjected to a finite number of programming/erasing operation cycles, a difference of the read currents in the program state and the erase state will be hard to distinguish. The reliability of the non-volatile memory cell will suffered from the aforementioned drawbacks.
Thus, a novel non-volatile memory cell and methods for programming, erasing and reading thereof are desired.